Women’s Bike Maintenance Intensive

Overview:

The Women’s Bike Maintenance Intensive is a 3 part course designed to teach you the basics of how to take care of and fix your bike. It is designed to come after the “basic maintenance” course offered monthly, but it is not required to understand or enjoy this course. Classes are structured around an informal lecture with hands on practice. Feel free to bring your own bike to learn with.

This is a workshop series for cis women, trans women, and gender non-comforming and non-binary folks only.

The series will be capped at 18 people, and you must commit to all three sessions. If you can’t commit to all three, please consider attending our regular Women’s and GNC Open Workshop on the last Wednesday of every month, or one of the all-gender workshops regularly held at the shop.

Class 01: “Brakes” This class covers brakes and their adjustments. Learn how brakes work, what goes wrong, and how to fix them. We’ll learn how to fix brakes squeaking, getting stuck, or seeming too loose.

Class 02: “Gears and Derailleurs” This class covers everything you need to know about how gears work and how to fix common problems. We’ll learn about the basics of shifting systems, how derailleurs, gears, and chains work, and how to get rid of that weird clicking sound that happens when you shift.

Class 03: "Bearing Adjustments and Wheel Truing" Slightly more advanced, this class is a great finale for our Basic Maintenance Series of classes. This class covers bearing adjustments (hubs, bottom brackets and headsets), as well as wheel truing.

A former mechanic at 718 Cyclery, Elori loves teaching people how bikes work and is a firm believer in the power of learning how to fix things yourself. When not working on bikes, she can be found making music, making films, and riding her skateboard.

Where bicycles are concerned, Meredith's heart is in the liberating power of the riding, and working on, of all types of bikes for all types of people, on any surface and in any weather. She teaches project-based mathematics at a public high school in Manhattan for recent immigrants, where she also facilitates an after-school bike mechanics and cycling program.

Heather Meehan grew up riding her bike in circles around her parents' driveway on Long Island. She fell in love with bike touring during a 2015 ride with Sustainable Cycles and since then has embarked on a number of self-supported tours, most recently to Montreal. When she is not biking, Heather teaches healthy, seasonally-inspired cooking classes for youth through the organization Allergic to Salad.

El has lived and breathed bikes since 2011. Most critically, cycling introduced them to the thrills of doing things for oneself. In their recent move to NY pursuing an MSW, El fulfilled their long held dream to work as a shop mechanic. In addition to wrenching, El’s skills for surviving an apocalypse include empathic listening, cutting hair, and stick ‘n poke tattooing.